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The Labour Left THE LABOUR LEFT PATRICK SEYD Ph. D. DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL THEORY AND INSTITUTIONS SUBMITTED JUNE 1986 THE LABOUR LEFT PATRICK SEYD SUMMARY Throughout its lifetime the Labour Party has experienced ideological divisions resulting in the formation of Left and Right factions. The Labour Left has been the more prominent and persistent of the two factions, intent on defending the Party's socialist principles against the more pragmatic leanings of the Party leadership. During the 1930s and 1950s the Labour Left played a significant, yet increasingly reactive, role within the Party. In the 1970s, however, the Labour Left launched an offensive with a wide-ranging political programme, a set of proposals for an intra-Party transferral of power, and a political leader with exceptional skills. By 1981 this offensive had succeeded in securing the election of a Party Leader whose whole career had been very closely identified with the Labour Left, in achieving a significant shift of power from the parliamentarians to the constituency activists, and in developing a Party programme which incorporated certain major left-wing policies. Success, however, contained the seeds of decline. A split in the parliamentary Party and continual bitter intra-Party factional divisions played a major part in the Party's disastrous electoral performance in the 1983 General Election. The election result gave additional impetus to the Labour Left's fragmentation to the point that it is no longer the cohesive faction it was in previous periods and is now a collection of disparate groups. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the Social Science Research Council for its financial aid in the form of a postgraduate research award; Professors Bernard Crick and Royden Harrison for their support and encouragement; and Lewis Minkin for sharing his ideas and encouraging me to complete this project. I am grateful to Marg Jaram for typing the thesis in its entirety in such a speedy and capable manner. -iv- CONTENTS Introduction 1 1. The Labour Party: purpose, structure and value system 5 2. The Labour Left 1918-1970 35 3. Labour Left resurgence 88 4. The Left rank and file 150 5. Democracy in the Party(1): The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and the re-selection of Labour MPs 206 6. Democracy in the Party(2): The Rank and File Mobili sing Committee and the election of the Party leadership 252 7. Labour Left leadership: Tony Benn 289 8. Flourishing of the Labour Left 324 9. Fragmentation and re-alignment of the Labour Left 392 10. The Local Government left 416 11. Conclusion 439 Appendices 467 Sources 11814 -v- "What a mysterious thing 'the Left' is." Richard Crossman commenting in his diary in 1951 "The Labour Party is a very broad party, reflecting a wide variety of opinions from Left to Right. This diversity of view is a great source of strength and we must vigorously resist any attempt that is made to drive the Left or the Right out of the party." Tony Benn, speaking in Birmingham at the May Day rally, 1979 "This Conference deplores the growth of factional groups inside the Party, whether of the right or left or centre. Whilst recognising that, in a broadly based Party, it is natural for members holding similar opinions on controversial questions to co-operate to press their views, it believes that the establishment of such groups on a permanent basis leads to intolerance and intrigue, and to the formation of what are in effect parties within the Party, and that they constitute a threat to the Party's unity and effectiveness as a fighting force." Resolution submitted by Bristol South CLP to the 1981 Labour Party conference -1- INTRODUCTION Delegates to the Labour Party's annual conference, meeting in Blackpool in October 1980, decided that the Party should adopt a wide range of commitments including an alternative economic programme, a withdrawal from the European Economic Community, a unilateral policy of nuclear disarmament, and an abolition of both private education and private medicine. They also decided to introduce an electoral college to choose the Party's Leader and Deputy Leader and to reaffirm a previous commitment to introduce the practice of mandatory reselection of all Labour MPs. These conference decisions were the culmination of a long campaign by the Labour Left to change the character of the Party. Further confirmation of the extent to which the Party had changed came in November 1980 when Michael Foot, a long-standing member of the Labour Left, was elected by the Parliamentary Labour Party as its new leader. Both Party Leader and policies were now closely identified with the Left. Never before in the Party's history had the Labour Left been so powerful. The forward march of the Labour Left is the subject of this thesis. First, to explain its rise to such a prominent position within the Party. Some Labour Left critics claimed that the victories had been secured by conspiracy and by irrational and forcible tactics reminiscent of the pre-war German fascists. One object of this thesis is to demonstrate how wide of the mark and how -2- hysterical were these attacks. This thesis suggests various alternative reasons why the Labour Left came to power. The foundation for the rise of the Labour Left was the collapse of post-war social democracy with its commitment to a mixed economy, economic growth, full employment, universal social services and free collective bargaining. By the mid-1960s a weak economy, low economic growth and an unstable currency led to challenges to the political consensus. On both the Left and the Right of the party spectrum there was a reaction to the social democratic consensus and the emergence of a more fundamental politics believed to be more appropriate to current political circumstances. Public expenditure cuts and labour law reform by Labour governments and free market economics by Conservative governments are specific examples of the extent to which conventional politics had collapsed. Full employment and a steady growth in money wages had been the background to industrial relations for almost twenty years but by the end of the 1960s pressures to curb increases in money wages resulted in the growth of trade union militancy, firstly over wages but then in defence of traditional legal immunities. A new generation of trade union leaders emerged from this militancy more in sympathy with the Labour Left than their predecessors. The alliance between Party leaders and certain senior trade unionists, first forged in the 1930s, which had placed the Labour Left in so weak a position with the Party, no -3- longer prevailed. The political terrain had shifted and the Labour Left responded to this by producing a cogent analysis of the economy and restating the relevance of a traditional form of socialism which emphasised the importance of structural changes to the capitalist economy rather than a more restricted notion of socialism which had prevailed in the 1950s. Furthermore, as well as a relevant programme the Labour Left also had powerful political leadership in the person of Tony Benn, a most able political communicator and senior Labour politician, who emerged to weld together a wide range of groups and individuals into a single, powerful left wing force within the Party. A new political generation, both male and female, entered the Labour Party in the 1970s/1980s. They were primarily younger people with a higher education, radicalised in the late-1960s, and likely to be public service professionals. The Labour Left inspired and then capitalised upon the recruitment of this new political generation. Finally, in explaining the rise of the Labour Left, the emergence of a new local government left is significant. The development of trade union militancy had been a major source of support for the Labour Left in the mid-1960s and early 1970s but by the mid-1980s the unions were less of a radical force primarily due to large scale unemployment, and parts of local government had replaced them as a radical institutional base of support. Local government could not provide the votes within the Labour -4- Party as had the affiliated unions but it could provide a source of ideas, outside the usual parliamentary-dominated Party channels, could provide the opportunity to test out in practice some of the ideas developed by the Labour Left, and often in doing so acted as the sole institutional focus of opposition to the Conservative Government. This thesis compares this 'new Labour Left' with its predecessors of the 1930s and 1950s and notes its distinctive strengths and weaknesses. Some of the weaknesses have contributed to its fragmentation and decline since 1981 which leads to the third object of the thesis which is to explain the realignments now occurring within the Labour Left. Terms have been used recently such as 'hard' and 'soft' left, 'new' and 'traditional' left, 'vanguardist' and 'participatory' left. These terms need examining in order to ascertain the significance and force of today's Labour Left. Before examining the contemporary Labour Left in any detail it is necessary to place this faction within a Party framework. Chapter One suggests reasons for the existence of a Labour Left and the conditions within the Party that facilitate its activities. -5- CHAPTER ONE THE LABOUR PARTY: PURPOSE, STRUCTURE AND VALUE SYSTEM The Labour Party began life as an indirect party, namely that its membership was composed solely of affiliated bodies - primarily trade unions, socialist societies, and trade councils; not until 1918 was the direct
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